I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: INTERIOR DISPOSITION-“Fornix” (2008).

It was challenging to find a related song for this week’s reading, although frankly a band called Interior Disposition would fit with just about any DFW passage.  But having a song called “Fornix” paired nicely with the computer problems that the author faced this week.

From the online information, it seems like Interior Disposition is a metal band.  And yet when I tracked down their full album and listened to a bit it’s largely trippy outer space noodling, or as one of the sites labels them: dark ambient.  There’s bubbling sounds and sounds of what I think of as deep space.  It is strangely relaxing and yet with a hint of tension all the way through (so yes, dark ambient is a pretty good sum).

Okay a little more digging tells me that the band is actually a guy, Oleg Hurvatov, who is Russian and also records under several other aliases: the wonderfully named Exploplasmatic Coagulation, and the puzzling Lanceolaria Im Licht Der Laterne

“Fornix” is only 1:46 and is probably a good introduction to the band/album.  If you like the 2 minute sound, the rest is pretty darn similar, just much longer.

[READ: August 18, 2014] Pale Summer Week 6 (§35-§45)

This weeks read was mostly a series of smallish sections.  some of them are entertaining, some of them provide interesting insights into the organization of the Service and of some of the characters.  And some of the sections are just downright funny.  The more I read of this book this time, the more bummed I am that it was never finished.  I even just wish I knew how much more he had planned.  There’s potential for this book to have spiraled out to 800-900 pages, there just seems to be so many things he could have followed up on–the Sylvanshine transformation to mastering RFI; the whole business with the infant, I love it; learning more about Mr. X (although likely there wouldn’t be much more about him); and of course what led to David Wallace leaving the Service and what compelled him now to write about it (which I don’t think is really addressed).

§35

This was originally published in Harper’s as “The Compliance Branch.”

I found this section to be laugh-out-loud funny; the kind of thing I read to other people and they look at me like I’m weird, but I will continue to laugh about this section.

This is the story about a fierce baby.  We don’t know who the narrator is, but the baby belongs to his Audit Group Manager, Mr. Manshardt.  The baby’s gaze over its pacifier or bottle can only be described as “fierce, intimidating, aggressive” (387).  The description goes on in very funny ways–“level and unblinking gaze,” “almost accusing…riding his father like a mahout rides and elephant.”  The baby gives nothing.  Many a GS-9 have tried to make eyes at the baby or engage it in some way but it never stops staring, with an expression “as if it were hungry and the auditor were food but not quite the right kind” (389).

The crux is that Mr Manshardt seems to need the auditor’s office and so this auditor moves his stuff (including Doberman hand puppet…so maybe it is the same person as in §30 and not a mistake as I mentioned earlier?) into Manshardt’s office, where the infant remained during work hours.  While in there he heard what he was sure was a cleared throat. The baby stood/leaned with its hands clasped in front of it, like any other manager and said, “Well?”  This auditor deferred to the infant.

This chapter introduces in footnotes (so is it David Wallace?) the Charleston code, a code used in supermarkets c=0, h=1 … n=9 to show an item’s original price [TE=75].

§36

This section was originally revealed at a Lannan lecture and was referred to as “Three Fragments from a Longer Thing.”  Perhaps because I heard it read in the lecture, I found this section to be tough to read again.  Basically a boy tries to touch his lips to every part of his body.  He winds up doing stretching exercises (and actually deforming parts of his body) to achieve this.

At the time I couldn’t imagine how it would fit into a novel.  And a later fragment about the boys shows him severely disfigured, but that’s not included here.  It is an interesting concept, but I don’t think it connects to anyone else in t he book.  There’s no one described as particularly ungainly or freakish looking, but the whole idea of patience and lack of boredom certainly fits.

What I took more from it this time was the items about the boy’s father who is somewhat plagued and disturbed by his 8 and then 9-year-old son spending so much time by himself and looking more and more limber and gangly. The father worked very hard to maintain and improve his attitude, taping inspirational quotes to his mirror which he read while shaving.  He also felt tortured, coming from a combination of a sexual drive and having no (metaphorical) backbone.  He had had an affair with a woman when the boy was 4.  The woman was also married, but after a time, he felt that the affair was becoming too much of an obligation.  He grew disinterested.  Subsequently, so did she, but he feared that she would reject him, so he pursued her harder.  His solution was to see a third woman, and so on and so on.

Unlike his father, the boy possesses no doubt about his goal of touching his lips to every part of his body.  He would do it as well since he was so patient and thorough.

§37

This two page section is a bout a guy named Russell, although he accepts “Russ” he prefers Russell.  He is on a very awkward first date in which he talks about how awkward it is to make small talk with some one you have just met.

§38

This section returns us to David Wallace as he explains the convoluted computer system that resulted in the confusion between the two David Wallaces.  Until mid 1987, the IRS ‘ integrated system was full of bugs–exacerbated by the use of updated Fornix keypunch cards instead of the original Holleriths (one had round holes, the other square).

The main problem was with ghost redundancies in the processing of employee promotions. So if GS-9 John Doe is promoted to GS-11, the system would create a new file for GS11 John Doe, thereby having two records for the same person.  The solution was to make a GO TO subroutine so that it would only recognize the higher ranked individual.  There’s a brief aside that the “demotion” problem with this subroutine was not a big deal as people were rarely demoted.  This impacted David Wallace directly though when the David Francis Wallace GS-13 was assumed to be the only one, thereby eliminating GS-9 (ie. him).  So when he arrived, he was the only David F. Wallace.

So it was not his fault at all.  And the older Wallace was apparently too meek or passive to complain during all of the snafus that took pace.  He sat in office after office being told he had already been processed. There was also a lag in communication between systems because of the hub design of the computers, which always slowed down during tax season anyway.

The techies were planning to include a BLOCK and RESET sub-subroutine for the thirty-two most common surnames in America but as he said earlier. Wallace was 104th most common, so it wouldn’t have impacted him either.

Our author was eventually accused of everything from contractual fraud to ‘impersonation of an immersive’ (he felt that this was possibly made up by Dick Tate’s hatchet men) Eventually Leonard Stecyk conceded that it was no one’s fault.

§39

Claude Sylvanshine, back in Martinsburg Systems as part of the April run-up to his advance work at REC tried running his Remote Fact Acquisition on the top brass of Post 047.  (This suggests again that he can control it which he didn’t seem to be able to do earlier).  He got some fact sets on DeWitt Glendenning Jr. (his hatred of mosquitoes, allergy to shellfish, belief that his genitals were deformed).  He also learned some esoterica about home furnishings construction and power tools that led to an SDI (spontaneous data intrusion) about a male adult’s severed thumb (see below).  This led some to tailor plans around DeWitt losing his thumb (which of course didn’t happen).

The thumb incident related to Leonard Stecyk, the DDP.  The incident transformed Leonard Steyck into one of the most brilliant and able Service administrators in the Region, even though he has sublimated the details. And perhaps it was not that big a deal to him, perhaps it just changed the ways people reacted toward him, which can make a big difference in a person.

The event occurred in Stecyk’s tenth grade Industrial Arts class.   We see some examples of the abuse Stecyk absorbed in high school.  The Stecyk Special, for instance, was when the boys in his PE class would throw him to the floor and pee on him.  The class also contained two future convicted felons (one of whom gave Stecyk a red hot cast iron ingot to hold).  The abuse came even before this class, but the fact that he had no talent for industrial arts at all didn’t help.  His drafting and measurements were exceptional, but he could not do anything with tools (humorous examples abound).

As with everyone else who met Stecyk, his shop teacher hated him, not least because Leonard had memorized the safety regulations and pointed out “typos and ambiguous phrases” (418). Such a safety regulation was being demonstrated by the teacher when he gestured to show how dangerous it could be to gesture inside the yellow line and his thumb hit the band saw and was removed.

The scene was traumatic and very bloody.  All of the hard boys in class went into shock.  But Leonard remained calm through the whole thing, decisively acting and performing the correct first aid.  He saved the man’s life without even thinking about it.  After that incident, Stecyk didn’t become a hero, but but the cruel kids stopped picking on him because they felt uneasy about him now.  I love this line: “a strange unease came over the hard boys when they saw or even thought of Stecyk and real cruelty–as every adolescent knows–requires a close attention to the object of that cruelty” (421).

§40

A two page section Cusk is in a psychiatrists office, counting the boxes of Kleenex.  He lists things he is afraid of “spiders, dogs, mail, spiral notebooks” and on and on.

§41

A small section in which someone is yelling at Charlie because Charlie sent Cardwell to pick up one of Lehrl’s aides.  Cardwell is a demented ranter, an evangelist goon who will frighten the aide.  There is so much information in these few sentences.

§42

In this section, Todd, tells a story.  This story presumes you were alive, culturally, in the sixties.  Todd, wants to know how he can have all of this information from the sixties so prominent in his head when to Gaines it is just words.  Todd continues by telling a story about Rescue Rangers, which involves pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine hydrochloride–224 grams of pure meth in a box.  And they sold some it, but not enough.  Nevertheless, what they sold wreaked havoc.

Gaines tries to offer an example of how desperation is the bar to being accepted, but he is cut off.  But eventually he asks Todd about the Rescue Rangers.  That is not exactly clarified, but Todd explains that he took a huge dose and had a major freakout which made him move to Colorado and that’s how he is how he got the Service Moniker “Colorado Todd.”

§43

The narrator of this section likes DeWitt Glendenning (not sure who it is though).  An ENT appt. made him come in late and it was more quiet than usual that day.  He didn’t know what was happening and he hates this not knowing because it is a clear low-status marker.  After 11 AM he heard Trudi Keener, Jane-Ann Heape and Homer Campbell saying that there had been an explosion in another Region.  A car had blown up in front of one of the other offices.  According to George Molesworthy, the Posse Comiatus was active in Michigan.  Later in the break room, Glendenning and Gene Rosebury and Meredith Rand, Gary Yeagle and James Rumps were chatting and/or listening.

Rosebury says it’s not terrorism, it’s people not wanting to pay taxes.  Rand asks, if  I’m terrified, doesn’t that make it terrorism?

The narrator says that he didn’t know anyone who didn’t like and admire Glendenning.  This was how to be a successful administrator–not to act in such a way as to be liked, but to actually be that way.  Nobody ever felt that Mr Glendenning was putting on any kind of act, the way less gifted administrators do.  His door was always open to your suggestions, and he would listen to them but only act after reflecting on your suggestion.  Then there’s some talk of how nice he always looked, as well.

This leads to a discussion of administrative types, with two prominent ones being the tyrant and the fake friend (as seen in pop culture).  The narrator has a fantasy of catching Glendenning alone and casually talking with him about his ideas.

There’s a long sentence that gives a great deal of information unexpectedly here:

In the fantasy, Glendenning confides that Lehrl’s “constant reconfiguration of people’s spaces and the passages between them was a ridiculous pain in the ass and waste of time” (435).  Glendenning says he’d like to take Lehrl, the officious little prick, and put him in a box (with only one or two air-holes) and send him back to Martinsburg.

However, Lehrl is a protegé and favorite of the Assistant Commissioner for Taxpayer Service and Returns, and the Commissioner’s other protegé and favorite was Glendenning’s superior, so there went that idea.

The narrator offers some suggestions that will make Glendenning pretty happy (and make Lehrl unhappy) and the fantasy ends.

§44

This narrator spent two summers as a cart boy in Peoria and it was during this time that he learned: “life owes you nothing… no one will ever care for you as your mother did” (437).  He states that the world of men as it exists today is a bureaucracy.   The key to success in this bureaucracy is not efficiency or probity or insight or wisdom …  or … political cunning … or raw IQ … or loyalty” (437). The key is to deal with boredom (438).  “To find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless” (438).  In 1984 and 1985 he met two such men who could deal with boredom on such a level.  [We don’t learn who they are].

§45

This section is a another story about of Toni Ware.  And it’s gruesome (it has been noted that DFW seems to punish people named Toni/Tony, and, ouch, on this one).  Toni’s mom was a recluse who took up with bad nasty men.  In this instance Toni’s mom had stolen the man’s truck when they stopped at a rest area.

Before getting on to the action, we learn that Toni had tried to imitate her mother and grandmother’s cataleptic states as much as possible (this amused her).  She would sit still and slow her pulse and her breathing and hold her eyes open for long periods without blinking.  If you can resist the urge to blink, the eyes will start lubricating themselves.  [Does this mean that Toni is wearing the lubricating glasses in §27?].  She called this game playing dead.  David Wallace had remarked that Toni was creepy because even though she wasn’t shy or evasive she seemed to be staring at your eyes rather than into them–like a fish being aware of you but not recognizing you).

So the man catches up with them –standing on the hood of a tractor-trailer barreling down the road.  Toni’s mom floors it while trying to get some pills out of her purse and they go off the road and into a ditch.  (The window crank has imprinted itself in Toni’s side, if you can get her to show you, it’s quite eerie).  Her mother was breathing shallowly and was lying on top of Toni.  The man came in and saw that the mom was alive and killed her by pinching her nose and mouth shut.  Toni felt her mom resist, but she remained utterly still with her eyes wide open.  And she lay there, eyes open for minutes, he watched her determining that she was really dead.  Then he took some things and left.  And she lay there with her dead mom on her for several hours before someone found them.

“So do not mess with this girl; this girl is damaged goods” (443).

What a gruesome way to end a week.

§ § § § § § § § § § § §

It’s hard to believe we’re nearing the end.  As I said, there’s so much more I want to know about these people.  And I’d love to see a seating chart of these groups.